Construction of the new Padelford Street bridge in Berkley is expected to cause intermittent late-night and early-morning detours on Route 24 North and South for the next six weeks.

That’s the bad news.

The good news, according to the Department of Transportation, is that the new bridge, which could open as soon as Aug. 18, will be wider, safer and more attractive.

The ride will also be noticeably smoother, according to DOT spokesman Michael Verseckes, who said the 1950s-era overpass had become a crazy quilt of concrete patches.

“The bridge deck itself,” Verseckes said, had been rated over the course of the last few years as being “structurally deficient.”

The Exit 11 Padelford Street overpass was torn apart and removed this week.

Verseckes said workers with Franklin-based MAS Construction & Bridge Inc. closed the bridge to drivers on Thursday, June 26.

The next night, traffic heading south on Route 24 was diverted off the highway at Exit 11 to follow detour signs through back roads that eventually ended in Freetown.

A similar scenario occurred Saturday night for drivers heading north on Route 24, he said.

On Wednesday night and into the morning, Verseckes said, traffic in both directions was diverted as workers moved a 400-ton crane from the west to the east side of what was originally known as the Boston-Fall River Expressway.

Verseckes said northbound travel will be similarly disrupted overnight Tuesday, July 8, and Wednesday, July 9, as workers gain access to the median area for excavation and construction of the bridge’s center pier.

Work crews, Verseckes said, will work double shifts, seven days a week.

The intermittent delays in both directions over the next six weeks will occur from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., Verseckes said.

Ben Rose Jr., who lives right off southbound Exit 11 at 35 Padelford Street, said he doesn’t appreciate the five-hour span of noise and headlights from late-night traffic streaming past his house, not to mention the police detail officers using flashlights to direct the cars and trucks.

But Rose quickly conceded that the bridge replacement project is in everyone’s best interest.

“It had to be done,” he said. “It’s been falling apart for years.”

Rose, 67, said he’s grateful that the “noisy part,” with workers using jackhammers, seems to be over.

He said the house next to his, where he grew up and where his father had been living until recently, is right next to the work site.

Hill said his family has a lease agreement with the state to allow the construction company to store equipment there and use part of the property as a staging area.

Verseckes said the overall cost of the Padelford Bridge project is $5 million.